THE ACTRESS, DIRECTOR, WRITER, AND PRODUCER HAS A SOFT SPOT FOR HER HOMETOWN OF PITTSFIELD
By Anastasia Stanmeyer
Holiday 24
LIKE MANY PEOPLE born and raised in Pittsfield, Elizabeth Banks never forgets where she came from. She is, in fact, a product of her upbringing, in the best possible way. Her dedication to community and family, as well as her business acumen, have made her a role model to women and girls. Her achievements are rooted in the blue-collar work ethic and local support that have shaped her success.
Although she lives in LA, the actress, filmmaker, and entrepreneur remains closely connected to her Pittsfield and to her family, both of which have nurtured and passionately supported her. “I have a deep sense of community from being there,” she says of her hometown. “All of my civic activism comes from growing up there.”
Elizabeth Banks, née Elizabeth Mitchell, got her start on the big screen with minor roles before becoming part of the cult comedy Wet Hot American Summer in 2001. Her breakthrough role was as Betty Brant, the secretary of the newspaper tycoon in the three Spider-Man films. She then started popping up all over the place, starring in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Love & Mercy, The Hunger Games film series, and The Lego Movie franchise. She also starred in the Pitch Perfect series, which she produced through her production company Brownstone Productions, along with her husband, Max Handelman. She made her directorial film debut with the box office hit Pitch Perfect 2 and has taken on movies as far-fetched sounding as the hilariously gory Cocaine Bear and made them into successes. (There’s now talk of a sequel to Cocaine Bear.) On the small screen, Elizabeth earned three Emmy® Award nominations for her performances on 30 Rock and Modern Family.
Elizabeth is co-owner of Archer Roose Wines, a luxury canned wine company, and co-founded WhoHaha, a digital content studio and creative community made up of 5,000 women and gender-expansive creators in comedy. Her most recent endeavor is being a member of the all-female ownership group of BOS Nation FC—Boston’s new National Women’s Soccer League team set to begin play in 2026.
“That girl works so hard. Her life goes 90 miles an hour,” says her sister Sarah Muil, who lives in Pittsfield. “She has something going constantly, and usually it's five or six things going constantly. She's such a gracious, humble person when it comes to how much she does and how hard she works.”
When I talked with Elizabeth, she was just wrapping up The Better Sister, a series for Amazon based on a book by Alafair Burke and starring her and Jessica Biel. It's a classic whodunit. “It was a great cast experience, very female-led, which I love to see,” Elizabeth tells me. “The book was written by a woman. The cast is led by two women. The showrunners were two women. Our producers were mostly women. The show was picked up by female executives at Amazon. I can't tell you how different this is from 20 years ago in my career, where often I would be one of the few women in a room of executives, or one of the few women creatives behind something. To work on something that was so female-driven was really a fun, great opportunity.” Up next is Miniature Wife, which Banks has partnered with Matthew Macfadyen to star in and executive produce. The Peacock dramedy series is inspired by author Manuel Gonzalez’s masterpiece short story of the same name.
Two new films were released this fall, including the thriller A Mistake, an indie movie filmed in New Zealand, and Skincare, which Elizabeth is very excited about. (“It’s a small indie in a real throwback indie way. We got to make on a shoestring budget—running and gunning in the city. And I got to make it where I live in LA, which was fun.”) She also co-stars in DreamQuil, an AI thriller, with John C. Reilly. It is co-written, produced, and directed by Alex Prager in her feature-length debut. Brownstone is a producer of the film, which will be released next year.
Then there’s the ABC reboot of Press Your Luck, which Elizabeth hosts and executive produces, and which will air in its sixth season. “My sister and I used to love watching that show together with the family,” says Elizabeth. “Getting to play in that world as an adult is really fun. It takes me back to something that was really joyful for me as a kid.”
And that’s what drives Elizabeth in the roles she takes on, in the projects that she invests in, and in the movements and organizations that she supports. Her strong worth ethic is applied to what she believes in, and what she believes in is rooted in civic activism, in wanting to empower women and to stand up for other people who are marginalized. “She decided a long time ago that she could be the voice for other people,” says Sarah.
The eldest of four siblings, Elizabeth is 13 months older than Sarah. She is four years older then her other sister, Rebecca Mitchell, and 11 years older than her brother, Geoff Mitchell. Each of the siblings have successful, varied careers. Sarah is the Austen Riggs Nursery School director in Stockbridge. Rebecca is head of production for Final Cut in LA. (She worked post-production on Pitch Perfect 2.) And Geoff is head chef at Gorrono Ranch in Telluride, Colorado.
Their father, Mark Mitchell, served in the U.S. Navy and was a longtime GE employee in Pittsfield and Schenectady, New York. Their mother, Ann Mitchell, worked at a local bank, KB Toys, General Dynamics, and Raytheon. The couple divorced when Elizabeth was in college but remain good friends.
Their parents worked hard to provide for a family of six, which meant that their children found ways to keep busy after school. In the summer, Elizabeth and Sarah would ride their bikes up to Berkshire Hills Country Club and hang out at the pool. They shopped and ate at the counter of J.J. Newberry, an American five and dime store chain that was located on the bottom floor of Central Block on North Street. They also shopped at Bradlees and Kmart and went to the cinema on West Housatonic Street. And then there was the mecca of Berkshire teen shoppers, Berkshire Mall. “One of the goals of getting a job was so that you had money and you could buy clothes there,” says Sarah.
Elizabeth’s first summer job (she was soon joined by Sarah) was working the popcorn wagon on North Street. The antique wagon sat outside the bus stop on Park Square, where Berkshire County Savings was located. “There were so many people who used the bus,” says Sarah. (The privately owned popcorn wagon was purchased by Berkshire Bank in 2003 and has been operating seasonally in front of the bank’s North Street headquarters.)
Elizabeth and Sarah also worked at the White Horse Inn on South Street (now home to Balance Rock Investment Group). They were in charge of opening the inn in the morning, baking muffins and making fruit salad for breakfast, and cleaning the rooms.
Needless to say, the two girls were inseparable. They traded working at the inn to working at the Catholic Youth Center (CYC) in Pittsfield, which was located next door to the Boys and Girls Club on Melville Street. (It later merged with the Berkshire Family YMCA.) They worked in CYC’s Service Society until they graduated from high school. It’s no surprise that Elizabeth was president of the Service Society and head coach of CYC’s competitive cheerleading team. Through the CYC, she and Sarah would look for ways to help people in need in the community, doing such things as organizing Thanksgiving food baskets, setting up Halloween fun houses, and helping at middle school dances. It wasn’t just Pittsfield High students who belonged to the CYC—the center also included Taconic and St. Joe high school kids. So, they got to know others in the community who didn’t go to their school, widening their circle of friends even more.
“I think that's why we have such an affinity to Pittsfield, because it's so nostalgic to us,” says Sarah. “It brings us so many memories. Our dad lives on Pontoosuc Lake, and that's where we grew up learning how to swim. You'd have to dive down and pick up a hand fistful of sand and come back up so you could prove you could hold your breath that long.”
Their parents also made sure their children explored the area where they lived, partly because they didn’t have a lot of money to take trips. They went to the movies, they saw live theater, they visited museums, and when the girls were old enough, they went with their friends to Tanglewood.
Elizabeth excelled in sports at an early age, including being on the CYC’s basketball and cheerleading teams, as well as the Pittsfield softball league and all-star softball team. That came to a crashing halt when she slid into third base during a practice and ended up with a triple fractured leg. She was in a cast from her hip to her foot for nearly a year. The first thing she did when it was removed was ride her bike—and within minutes after she took off, she hit a pothole, fell onto that same leg, and broke it again. That pretty much ended any sports activities in middle or high school.
She made due and coached the cheerleading team. She joined the chorus at Reid Middle School and tried out for the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. She was selected to play Pontius Pilate because she could cover her cast with a robe. That was her first stage performance, a foreshadowing of her life’s passion to perform. She continued in plays and musicals in high school and became so popular that people would line up to watch her. One standout performance was in May 1991 at Pittsfield High School. A junior, she played Aldonza from Man of La Mancha, opposite senior Scott Wichmann, a singer and actor now based in Richmond, Virginia.
The musical, directed by Ralph Hammond, became a significant moment for the school's theater program, selling out performances and garnering community support. “I remember all of the young ladies in the chorus auditioned and sang these sort of flowery versions of the songs,” says Wichmann. “Liz just shook that role to its core. She wasn't afraid to make that character as earthy and raw as it needed to be. She just went for it as a young actor.”
Her timing was impeccable for the school, which was facing cuts in its arts programs. The school had a few theater performances designed to showcase the value of the program, and the students were encouraged to take their acting roles seriously. “At the center of it was Elizabeth,” says Wichmann. “All the performances sold out to overflow crowds. People were writing letters to the school board and to the newspaper, saying how incredible they thought the production was.” The school’s theater program took off and reached national notoriety over the next two decades.
Elizabeth continued her interest in acting while attending the University of Pennsylvania on a full scholarship, majoring in communications and minoring in theater arts. She met Max Handelman her first day on campus. (They married a decade later.)
Her first time on TV was a reenactment for an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, as a woman who was presumably murdered. She went to Edinburgh, Scotland, to do a theater festival and decided that she wanted a career in acting.
She returned to Pittsfield the summer after graduating college and was a reporter for the Pittsfield Gazette before moving to New York City to live with Max. She was accepted into the advanced training program at the prestigious American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and when that was completed, Elizabeth returned to live with Max in New York City. They both decided to move to LA, where she pursued her acting career and he went back to college for his MBA at UCLA.
“It wasn’t a surprise to any of us about her acting career, because we knew how talented she was and we always thought that she would do something amazing,” says Sarah. “She doesn't give up easily at anything.”
These days, Elizabeth visits her family whenever she can. She recently bought a home in New York City to be closer to them, adding to her homes in LA and Utah. Her two sons come to the Berkshires every summer to go to camp with their cousin. Elizabeth plans to be in Pittsfield just before Thanksgiving to visit her family. Most likely, she will pop into a few favorite places—Dottie’s in Pittsfield, Mint Indian Lakeside Dining in Lee, and just about anywhere in Lenox.
She is connected to the Berkshires by various organizations, such as the Elizabeth Freeman Center, which she plans to do video spots for their upcoming fundrasing campaign. (The organization, which provides services to victims of domestic and sexual violence, recently purchased the 1Berkshire building in Pittsfield to make it their administrative office.) There’s a possibility that she will do a talkback at The Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington, maybe in the spring, she says.
In honor of Sarah, Elizabeth sponsored a “mix and mingle” on November 11 at Balderdash Cellars, on the eve of the Massachusetts Association of Education for Young Children conference at Taconic High School. Elizabeth is on the advisory board of the Berkshire Film and Media Collaborative and has supported the organization financially. She sent PPE to Berkshire Medical Center and Baystate Medical Center during Covid.
She involves her family in her work when she can, such as when she handed Sarah a book to read when she was visiting her in LA. “Liz handed me The Hunger Games, and I finished that book in a day. I just remember thinking that it was the coolest thing. I had no idea why she wanted me to read this, so I called her to find out. She said, ‘Well, what character do you think that I would be if I was in this book?’ And I said, ‘Effie Trinket.’ She said, ‘Bingo! You got it.’ And I thought, Oh my God, how are they gonna make this into a movie? She brought that character to life, and it was just incredible.”
If Elizabeth can’t make it to her family, then she brings her family to her. When Sarah’s children were little, Elizabeth worked on Seabiscuit, which thrilled her dad because he is a horseracing fan and used to take the family to Saratoga Race Track. She brought the family to Saratoga Springs for the filming of that movie. Sarah went to Germany to watch the filming of Charlie's Angels, which Elizabeth wrote and directed, and to celebrate their younger sister's 40th birthday. They have been to premieres, walked the red carpet, and spent time behind the scenes. And it hasn’t been just Elizabeth’s parents and siblings. Cousins, aunts, and uncles have joined in the fun.
Those in the community have taken pride in Elizabeth and have watched proudly as her notoriety skyrocketed. And she fiercely takes pride in the people who have been a part of her Pittsfield, like her classmate and high school theater co-star, Scott Wichmann. He not only is in show business, but is also a Navy Reserve officer. When he was promoted to chief petty officer in January 2021—a milestone for him—Elizabeth celebrated that achievement by congratulating him on her Instagram feed.
“In an industry where so many people are pulling at her, the fact that she took a moment to acknowledge that,” Wichmann says, his voice faltering from emotion, “it made me and my entire family so happy, and they’re so grateful to her. She’s just the best of Berkshire County. She really is. The only problem I have is that she likes The Hotdog Ranch better than Teo’s.”
And with that, the line is drawn in Elizabeth’s fair city of Pittsfield.
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